Untoward

Strollers.. photo credit "skeddy in NYC" via Flickr and Creative Commons

Did you see the Op-Ed bit in the NY Times a couple of days ago about forward-facing baby strollers vs.  the other kind — apparently called “toward-facing” strollers?  The piece highlighted the author’s research into whether parents talk to their kids less when the young ones face forward (vs. toward their parents) — therefore possibly slowing childrens’ language/communications development. It was an interesting article, a nice kind of Gladwellian view on the long- and wide-range impacts of seemingly little things.

Me.. personally.. I liked the idea of my kids facing forward to the world and soaking it all in. My view is they learned a lot about communicating by seeing others interacting. Lord knows they probably would have gotten pretty sick of staring at my face for all those hours in the stroller.  Plus there were many times when we’d stop, I’d turn the stroller toward me in a cafe and we’d get a coffee. (Well, I’d get the coffee… I’d get them something else.) And we’d talk.

UPDATE: lots of letters to editor at Times here.. and a funny graphic too